THIERINGíS JESUS THE MAN

†

In 1992, Doubleday
published one of the most bizarre Jesus books ever.† Well maybe except for the gospels! But
the story of the life of Jesus in the book is actually sane compared to what we
read in the gospels. Called Jesus the Man, it was written
by Professor Barbara Thiering of the University of Sidney.†

Thiering researched the Dead Sea Scrolls of Qumran and
claimed she used the codes in them
to unlock the real story of Jesus from the gospels and Acts.† She maintained that the gospel stories about Jesus
are false and were never meant to be taken
literally.† The literal story is hidden
in jargon and words that mean something different from what they seem to
mean.†

So
she claimed that the stories about
Jesus are false and were never meant to be taken
literally.† For example, the gospels
mention the Mount of Olives.† Theiring says that
this is not a mountain at all but a monastery at Qumran
that bore this nickname.

††† The true story of Jesus according to her is
this.† He was not born of a virgin.† He did not do miracles.† He was not nailed on the cross outside of the
city of Jerusalem.† He was nailed at Qumran. Though crucified, he did not die on the
cross.† He did not supernaturally rise
again.† He did not go up into
Heaven.† He married Mary Magdalene and
divorced her.† He did not die until after
64 AD.

††† If the gospels really had been
a code then why did nobody near to the time they appeared say they were?† Why didnít the Jews invent a code for it that
showed Jesus up in a very bad light?† Why
didnít the Jews say the gospels were a code?

††† Why hide information in codes
when it is not inflammatory and especially when it isnít a big secret or even
very important?† Theiring expects us
to believe that the parable of the Prodigal Son (Chapter 11) is not a parable
under the surface but gives real history. The story was told by Jesus
about a father who lost his son who went astray and who came back and was
welcomed despite how he treated his father. She says father was Simon the
Essene who was the Angel Gabriel who instructed Mary before her betrothal.
This is sheer nonsense. If the gospels are myth as she says, then there is
something wrong if myths about Jesus teaching parables that had no hidden
meaning couldn't be told. She speaks as if no parable could be told
without stupidly hiding a story that didn't need to be hidden.

Incredibly, Simon
Magus who never appears in the gospel at all but briefly in the book of Acts is
turned into a character who is talked about as much as Jesus in the coded
version. Why would the gospels hide such an important figure in codes?
Why would they not hide Jesus as much?

The gospels cannot
mention Jews at all. She takes Jews to mean a person who heads circumcised
Gentiles who live like ordinary Jews (page 540, Corgi Edition).
You can make anything mean what you wish with nonsense like that. Why
hide that person?

Theiring
expects us to believe that events like the death of Joseph (page 89, Corgi
Edition) needed to be hidden. And the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene!

Why hide the story of Jesus letting the
uncircumcised non-Jews in a tale that seems to say he turned water into wine
(page 122)? Why hide the story of people having to walk through water in
some kind of religious rite in the tale of Jesus causing a catch of fish (page
124)? Why hide the story of Jesus going up to a high platform to pray in the
story of the ascension?† She kids herself
that the story of Jesus on the surface reading of the gospels which ascribes
supernatural feats to him was created to satisfy the need for myth.† They could have used a simpler code but they
did not which makes it all so absurd.†
Jesus could have told his real story and so could the gospellers and
they could have satisfied the myth crave another way.

Besides, they
couldn't have had that great of a need for myth that they would engineer so many
myths about Jesus. Why him? The story she has of a Jesus who isn't
that interesting would certainly not inspire a taste for fervent myth making.

††† She says that the gospels code shows
that Jesus survived the cross and did not rise again. Jesus passed
into a coma on the cross and didn't die and was revived later. She says Paul was
aware of that but for the sake of myth he started going on about a Jesus who
died and rose again. If Jesus had not died on the
cross then Thiering is wrong to say that Paul knew
that.† Paul having clearly said
Jesus died is taken to indicate he didn't have a literal meaning in mind.
His epistles preach about the
death of the Lord and the epistles are older than the gospels or her
speculations.† She thinks that the Book
of Acts secretly records lots of meetings between Paul and the unresurrected for
never dead Jesus his boss. The surface account says these were visions of
a man who rose from the dead. No matter what she says,
Paul is a witness that there was no coded story-telling that became the
gospels.† She pretends that the evidence
against her such as Paulís testimony is not meant literally but is symbolism
too.† You can make anything mean anything
you want if you write off evidence like that.†

††† Thiering
says that ďJewsĒ is a single person, the head of circumcised Gentiles (page
540).†

††† Joseph of Arimathea
is James the brother of Jesus.

††† Thunder is Jonathan Annas after he became pope.†
He was the Good Samaritan in Jesusí parable which disguised history as a
parable.† In the New Testament he is the
true High Priest and appears only in John 18:13 where he questions Jesus who
had been arrested by those who hoped to get him crucified.† So when Jesus called James and John sons of
thunder (Mark 13:17) it is
supposed to mean that they became associates of Annas
(page 411).† If she could she would claim
that he was their father but she cannot do that for history is against her so
she turns sons into a figurative thing.†
Anybody could find codes by making some words figurative.† She must have used some words in their
literal sense to be able to work out the code so she is arbitrary.† In John 12:29 Jesus prays to God who spoke to him and some people
hearing the voice said that it was thunder.†
Theiring contends that Jesus was praying to
Jonathan Annas who had spoken to him.† But if Thiering has
the code broken right, John would have written, ďJesus spoke to the
thunderĒ.† The way John wrote shows that Thieringís authority is really imagination.† So God must stand for Jonathan Annas.† Could you
imagine Jesus saying: ďYou shall love God with all your heart and soul and
mindĒ, if it did?† When Annas is one of the most minor of the New Testament
characters it is impossible to see how she could have worked out that he was
thunder even if the Dead Sea Scrolls use thunder as a code word for pope or
High Priest.† Jesus was believed to have
been a High Priest so thunder could be about him or anyone.† And how was the author supposed to write
about literal thunder with a system like that?†
If there had been a code the author would have mentioned Jonathan Annas by name before calling him thunder and then given
some hint that thunder was his nickname.†
That is the way intelligible codes are made.† He could have written that, ďAnnas was High Priest and he was called the man of
thunder.Ē† But the references to thunder
come before Annas is even mentioned so it is probably
literal thunder!

††† If thunder or God is a code
word then we would not know when a gospel meant real thunder or God.† Theiring says that
when Jesus prayed to God.† God's voice
not God thundered.† Yet she says thunder
means Annas.†
How could it when the surface narrative says that the voice was
thunder?† On page 115, we read that Simon
Magus inherited the Baptistís title the Voice.†
So why does Thiering deny that Simon Magus and
the Baptist were really one person, Jonathan Annas?

††† Thiering
claims that the gospels are mainly about two men: Jesus and Simon Magus who we
donít meet until we come to the book of Acts.†
This is ludicrous.† She says the
Christians did not like him so why didnít they give his name all the time
instead of creating pseudonyms such as the Leper and Lazarus?

††† It is true that codes were used
in the Dead Sea Scrolls.† However, they
were used by the sect of the scrolls to apply ancient writings to their own
times.† Today, Catholics do the same.† They say that Moses parting the waters to let
Israel
go through to safety pictures Jesus saving his people through the sacrament of
water baptism.† But never were the codes
used to hide information in a book.† They
worked on old books but to try and hide what Theiring
says the gospellers tried would only lead to confusion and a code that could
not be interpreted.† For example, if
lightning was a person in the New Testament then who was said in the phrase
Jesus said or who was represented by the word parable?† Thiering has not
thought of this.

††† She even makes a fool of
herself to the degree that she says that the word crowds referred to King
Agrippa I!† (page
565).

††† Who would want to hide the
everyday, mundane, and needless information she thinks she sees in Acts 10
(page 353)?† Who would even want to
record it?

††† If the gospels were written to
fit a code then why are they readable?†
To fit the code everything in them would have to be made to measure with
the result that there would be senseless sentences in it everywhere.

††† In John 1, we read that Jesus
was the word and the word was God since he became flesh.† Why does Thiering
then not argue that God is Jesus and not Jonathan Annas
or that Jesus is Jonathan Annas?† At least she would have a little evidence
from the text behind her then.

††† There is not a shred of
evidence that the codes of Qumran apply to the
gospels.† Why didnít they tell us to
study them in order to understand them?

††† Thiering
claims that a passage in the Damascus Document which speaks of a controversy
about polygamists tells us that Lydia, who her Jesus wed after divorcing Mary,
was a virgin though it does no such thing.†
This woman is a crank.† She even
says that Jesus appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls though there is no reason to
believe that.† Nearly all good scholars
have no time for her ultra-thin arguments.

††† It is impossible to see how Thiering can be sure that the Gospels are literal where
they say that Jesus was crucified and nailed on the cross by Pilateís
orders.† She even says that the sour wine
Jesus was given was real wine with poison in it.† She tells us that Jesus was condemned to
death at his trial because the code in Luke 23:20,21 and John 19:8-12 tells
us that no bribe was offered to get him released.† The verses never mention a bribe so she is
mixing the code with what the text says.†
It would be impossible to unravel the puzzle if the code is that badly
done.

††† How does she know that there
were not other scrolls with the code that was supposedly used in the New Testament?

††† Thieringís
evidence that her code is right and exists is unacceptable.†

††† John says that the notice
Pilate put over Jesus crucified could be read from the city of Jerusalem.†
Thiering says that this proves that Jerusalem was the code
word for the monastery of Qumran for it could
not be read from Jerusalem
but from the monastery so Jesus was nailed in the monastery grounds (page
141).† But it could have been a very big
notice and if Jesus was crucified just outside the city was all he could have
been close enough to the little city of Jerusalem
or if she is right that it canít be seen from the walls of Jerusalem then that could have been a gospel
mistake.† You canít use what might be
mistake as evidence for some outlandish new hypothesis.

††† Thiering
says that Acts 11:27-30
and 12:25 have Paul going
from Jerusalem
(sic) to Jerusalem
(page 56).† In her view, this means that
he went from Qumran to Jerusalem.†
She assumes Qumran was nicknamed Jerusalem.
She states that the code proves there is no contradiction.† But Acts does not say that Paul did this at
all.† Theiring
assumes that when the elders of Jerusalem
gave money through and by Paulís hands that Paul must have been there.

††† Theiring
says that Mark said that Jesus went by boat to Gerasa
and when he stepped off it he was there but it was a sixty kilometres from
where he would have dismounted (page 56).†
But Mark does not say that Jesus stepped off the boat into Gerasa.† He was just
in the region of it.† Thiering
is lying for she wants to say that itís not an error but evidence that the real
Gerasa was not meant but that Gerasa was a code for
something else.†
But there was no error.† If there
had been a code it would be logical to say Gerasa One
for the real Gerasa and Gerasa
Two for the encoded or nicknamed one.††
And if there had been an apparent error that could be solved by the code
hypothesis that would not mean that the hypothesis was right for the error
might be just a real error

††† Thiering
thinks she sees another error when Jesus got off for a spot in the desert by
boat and the crowds who have to trek around the sea to get there beat him to it
(page 56).† Hasnít she heard of
dallying?† This error is supposed to be
in Mark 6:31-33.† Mark says that Jesus
and co were recognised on the way which started the crowds running to where
they thought they were going.† That
explains why Jesus and the disciples would take their time in order to relax.

††† Thiering
says the errors are not errors when the code is cracked.† When the errors are not
errors that says one thing only about the code.† And that is that there is no code.† She is wrong to say the gospels fit the
geography of Qumran and not Palestine.†
The gospels say tremendously little about geography and what they do say
is so short and sometimes value that it could fit any area at all if you want
to say that the place names are not the real places at all.

††† Thiering
says that when Jesus told his apostles in Mark that he was hiding the true
interpretation of the parables from everybody but them that it proves that
there was a code.† But she sees codes all
over the gospels and not just the parables.†
Markís Jesus says he hides the stuff in case the people will understand
but Matthew says that he tells parables not to hide anything because it is
their own fault if they do not see what he means.† Thiering is wrong
again.† If I wanted to create a Jesus
code I would focus on Mark alone for it was the first gospel and I could
suppose that the other gospels were products by those who mistook the Mark code
for real history.

††† It is recommended that the
chapter on Thiering in the wonderful, Who Was Jesus? be
read.

††† Jesus the Man is not
evidence that Jesus existed but that people are still inventing their own Jesus
just like the four evangelists and Paul did.†

††† Her latest book on Jesus which
says he wrote the Book of Revelation which is really about his later life is
doubly silly for the Book of Revelation is written in a very different and
fantastical and impenetrable way unlike the gospels and Acts.† If there was really a code the Book of Revelation
would have to be written in the same sober matter of fact way for changing the
style would place the code beyond any hope of being unravelled.† There is no evidence that Jesus wrote
Revelation at all and she ignores the fact that it was written too late for
Jesus to have had anything to do with it.†

†

Jesus the Man
tries to give us a Jesus of history. It fails. It is fantastical
nonsense though sane compared to the gospels. The gospel writers never
suffered for what they wrote and they never identified themselves.
Thiering did. I'd rather believe in her gospel than in the four gospels.